


Hold the Line

by dashery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Action, Age Difference, Alpha Timeline, Character Death In Dream, F/M, May-December Romance, Origin Story, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1371097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1994: The Betty Crocker conglomerate invites Dr. Jade English, celebrated astrophysicist and CEO of Skaianet Technologies, to teach one year of classes at their first foray into private education, Marjorie Husted University in Houston, Texas.</p><p>Jade says yes.</p><p>Contains violence against robots, too many background characters, Rose Lalonde on a Big Dog motorcycle, and the unspoken promise between a war-maker and those who would soldier on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hold the Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chronologicalimplosion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronologicalimplosion/gifts).



> _'(Also at least hints of DaveJade would be much appreciated, but not required.)'_ \- chronologicalimplosion
> 
> Hahahaha HA HA HA. WELCOME TO THE GRANNYSHIP. I'm. So sorry. This probably isn't what you meant.

**+April 1994+**

They'd meant the invitation as a sock to the face. Marjorie Husted University, the shiniest new private university in Houston, already fully accredited, would be greatly honored to have an eminent physicist and innovator in the space field blah blah blah words. Hey, Dr. English, America's favorite--or most infamous, anyway--octogenarian multimillionaire inventor businesswoman smartypants. Come teach a year of classes as a visiting professor to Texas's freshest crop of wannabe astronauts! We're so close to NASA headquarters, after all. We'd love to have you. It'll be fun.

And it would have been. Jade wouldn't call herself the teaching type, but she was eighty-four years old and could use a change from the everyday humdrum of reinventing science and running her competitors into the ground. Even her regular jaunts to Bengal (the People's Republic of Bangladesh now, she reminded herself--had been reminding herself since 1947) to study and enjoy the familiar, fertile fields off the Ganges had felt a little...dry. Wrangling freshmen could be the perfect sabbatical, she thought.

But Marjorie Husted University was a Betty Crocker property. Jade would find no opportunity for an invigorating game of tiddlywinks here, not when she was going up against her grandmother.

Of course, Jade always made business a pleasure. Usually she managed it by shooting things she didn't like in the face. And MHU was in Texas, so that particular idea wasn't off the table. And she had to admit the chance to sabotage Granny's next brainwashing plant brought a sharp little stab of glee to the old _cor humanum_.

On the one hand, going would be a pointless risk, and her war with Crockercorp was far from over. On the other hand, at least it wouldn't be boring.

The decision took no time at all.

Jade called a company-wide pow-wow to let them know she'd be taking the summer off to draw up lesson plans before shipping off to Houston, where she'd be teaching an experimental astronomy course. She'd be leaving Skaianet in their capable hands, and they'd better--Jade told them with a canine gleam--take care of her baby. Some giggled nervously, but most grinned back with the same fierce fondness. Looking over her company, this den of wolves she'd brought together, Jade felt not just accomplished, but proud. Instead of voicing it, she reminded them that she wanted regular reports and that she'd be keeping an eye on both stocks and products while she was away.

Her CFO clapped her on the shoulder on his way back to his desk, and Jade knew they knew without her saying it. They'd keep her pack safe until her return.

That left Jade free to draft the president of Marjorie Husted a gushing, ebullient letter of acceptance, as sweet as Grandmother Betty's famous brownies. She made a special trip out to a friend at IBM for a custom-made, hideously fluorescent lime typewriter ribbon just for the occasion.

She hoped whoever read it got a headache and signed it,

_Dr. Jade English, M.A., M.S., Ph.D._  
 _NASA Distinguished Public Service Medalist 1968_  
 _TIME Person of the Year 1976_  
 _Faraday Medalist 1989_  
 _IEEE John von Neumann Medalist 1992_  
 _Woodrow Wilson Awardee for Corporate Citizenship 1992_

"And humble, too," she cackled before sealing the envelope with her teeth.

**+August 1994+**

Jade arrived a month early to ensure she'd have all the equipment and textbooks she'd need. She thought she'd get a good sniff around the campus, too, but setting up her classroom--they gave her sole use of a small auditorium in a brand new physics building--took more of her attention than she'd planned. She had to familiarize herself with sliding-panel blackboards and projectors her instructors could only have dreamed of. The walls were too bare, so she ordered extra posters of nebulae and spectral diagrams that she then had to correct herself on taped-up sheets of green and yellow construction paper.

But she couldn't complain about the lab gear waiting for her in the Colonel Hilary Sassacre Center for the Physical Sciences. Telescopes, spectrographs, photomultipliers, diffraction gratings, and computers--everything they gave her was highest-end, almost (but never quite) as impressive as what she worked with at Skaianet. And it all came in that ubiquitous Betty Crocker red. Jade had to put up with it, of course. She couldn't just reject free tech, and while the budget they'd allotted her was generous to the point of nausea, she didn't think the university would take kindly to her using it to replace sixty brand-new computers with her company's own inventions.

That didn't mean she couldn't sneak back into the labs at night and crack open the hardware, remove the brainwave-altering implants within, and erase the subliminal messages from every program. But that meant more time she couldn't spend snooping around the other departments and administrative offices. And she had to take more catnaps in the cute little office they'd given her, with its comfortable leather chairs and big window. She made sure to rearrange the furniture so the best sniper could only look in and weep.

Her TAs hadn't gotten to campus yet, so she took all the laboratory set-up upon herself. When the physics department chair, a liver-spotted old man from Calcutta (no, Kolkata now) who eagerly switched to Bengali whenever he spoke to her, found her for the fifth time at the top of a ladder without a spotter, he finally sat down with her across one of the lab benches.

"Dr. English," he said, hands folded just so on the tabletop, "please, for the love of goodness and everything holy, especially the personal happiness I feel when I walk into a room and see no bloody body splattered all about--please, find someone to help you do these things until the holidays are over. For me. For my own peace of mind."

Jade scrutinized his face for any sign of scorn or sabotage, but found none. Most of the faculty at MHU were average, if eccentric, folk; they had no idea what monster ultimately signed their paychecks. Professor Dutta had innocent intentions, if vaguely patronizing ones. And Jade liked him. He lived two blocks from campus with his son, his daughter-in-law, and two overweight flat-coated retrievers he'd named Sarama and Sagan.

So she laughed a little, leaned back, and let it go. "If you say so, Ijay! But only because I wouldn't want you to have a heart attack on me."

Dutta smiled at her. "If you don't mind my asking, Dr. English, how old are you this year?"

"Oh, I'd be," she said in a slow creak, pretending not to know, "only about eighty-four. Why?"

The crows' feet at his eyes crinkled even more deeply with his unexpectedly wide grin. "I'm sixty-three. Good day, Mother, and do take care."

His laugh was just as broad as his smile, and Jade was still chuckling when she left the building later. She exited smack into the start of an afternoon thunderstorm. A boy stood smoking just outside the door. He'd pressed his back flat to the wall to get out of the rain and tucked both hands into the pockets of his track jacket.

"Aren't you hot in that?" she asked, still grinning. Even with the rain, it was at least ninety degrees out in this part of Texas.

The boy glanced at her--or she thought he did, it was hard to tell behind the knock-off Ray-Bans he wore. She couldn't see much of his face at all between the sunglasses and his long, shaggy hair. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and turned away from her to exhale, which she appreciated. "You know it," he drawled tonelessly.

Jade nodded, in good humor, and read the sky. The mass of thunderheads above didn't look like it would budge any time soon. She could feel the kid's eyes on her, and she realized idly that he shouldn't be a student, since even orientation wouldn't start for another two weeks. The dorms weren't open. If he didn't live near here, he'd have a long way to go in this downpour.

"If you stub that out, I'll let you in where it's dry," she offered.

He did look at her now, and she could just make out the arch of two raised eyebrows over the frames of his glasses. "Grandmom, I'm touched, really," he started, but she cut him off with a punch to the arm that made him drop his smoke.

"Don't 'Grandmom' me, wiseass." Jade folded her arms over her chest and smirked at the look he gave her, rubbing his arm. "It just so happens I could use an extra hand or two setting things up before classes start. So what will it be, whippersnapper? In or out?"

"Welp." He stared down forlornly at his already-soggy cigarette, then ground it the rest of the way out with the heel of his Converse. "Now that you've made it clear you only want me for my body, ma'am, how could I say no?"

She held the door open for him and cuffed his other arm as he passed through. "Good answer."

He tossed her a hurt look over his shoulder. "Hey, handle with care. I have a strict no-return policy on damaged merchandise."

"Well, it's all right if I have to take you home. I made extra sure to pick an apartment with a pet-friendly policy."

The boy laughed, if it could be called that. It was a voiceless breath through the nose and a half-moon smile, but he let her steer him forward without complaint.

**+September 1994+**

His name was Dave, and he worked at the video store across the street that ran behind the H. Sassacre Center, which he affectionately called "The Sass." His boss's daughter had asthma and he banned smoking on the premises on principle, so Dave would hop across the street on breaks. He'd just been enjoying an after-work drag in his usual spot when the clouds broke open, and then, well, she knew the rest.

("Kidnapping," he called it. "Undocumented Tex-Mex slave labor."

"Community service!" she retorted. "Now get up there and hand me those Dobsonians, I've got a better place to store them for now. No, not those--the big telescopes."

"As the wicked witch commands."

"Don't test me, my pretty.")

Dave held his All-Stars together with duct tape and a prayer and didn't seem to own more than two pairs of pants, but somehow he'd gotten his hands on one of the priciest-looking camcorders on the market. Jade suspected it might not even be on the market yet; he answered evasively about the make and model, and when she asked for specs, all he ever gave her was incomprehensible mumbling about DIF blocks and 4:1:1 chroma subsampling. He was a cagey, hopelessly gangly bundle of bleached hair and bravado, and, luckily for Jade, he was just tall enough to reach the top laboratory shelves without the ladder Professor Dutta seemed so harried about.

And it was nice, actually, to have his help. Jade hadn't realized how much the work was taking out of her. Small wonder she'd been napping so much.

"So you're not in school?" She asked the third day in a row he turned up to help her.

"Nah." He cursed as a box she handed him turned out to be heavier than he'd expected, but he managed to hoist it into an overhead cabinet. "No offense, Abuelita, but I've got better things to do with my time than catch flies while some egghead drones on about old white dead guys. Oh, man, that one was good, I gotta write that one down." Dave's voice dropped into a distant mutter. "Catching flies on the graves of dead white guys, something about slaves, turning soil into spoils, toil, yeah, sloughed mortal coil. Hell yes, that's the fresh shit."

Jade snorted and nudged the back of his head with a rolled-up poster of the solar system. "Well," she said and then chose not to continue until he lifted his eyebrows to show she had his full attention. "Are you free on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons once classes start?"

Dave mulled the question over and shrugged. "I could make myself free. Go full Abe Lincoln on the Strider Confederacy, emancipate the hell out of these future dates. Said Moses down in Egypt land, let my weekdays go." He waited for her to be impressed. She tapped her fingers against her elbow. He sighed. "I can talk to my boss, I guess. Why? Are you still gonna be shifting stuff around after orientation? You need a TA for Boxology 101?"

"Yes, Dave, that is exactly what I teach here, all the fancy telescopes and computers you're moving around are just to impress people. I was thinking," she continued before he could weave that into some other nonsensical rhapsody, "that I might like to have these classes recorded. For posterity! I'm only going to do this once, and when you get to be my age, you start wanting to put things away for the future."

He tilted his head a millimeter, and Jade knew she'd taken him off-guard. "So, what, you want it on tape?"

"Exactly! You're always talking about cameras, so I thought it might be fun." She made a box of her thumbs and pointer fingers and smiled at him through the frame. "But if you're not interested, I guess I can ask the A/V department..."

"Whoa, hey, did I say I wasn't interested."

Dave looked at her with a quiet thoughtfulness she hadn't seen on him before. Somehow, it made him seem even younger, more cautious of a world he didn't have the experience to own. She wouldn't go to the A/V department, she realized. Jade couldn't trust anyone who wouldn't answer directly to her; the Batterwitch had her ways to twist the media to her own purposes. So she weathered Dave's regard patiently and likewise took his measure.

He was a kid, she thought. A boy with silly notions of grandeur and little more. But still--that little meant he _was_ more. He had ambition. She'd seen it in how he handled his camera, and she saw it now in his even, unmoving gaze. Or maybe it was something else, that unsaid hunger behind his sunglasses.

The ones who came to Jade hungry were the quickest to bite and hold for her.

"I'll pay you," she said.

That broke the spell. "How much?"

She told him, knowing it wouldn't matter, knowing he just needed an excuse to accept whatever it was that he wanted from her. When MHU's fall term started a week later, Dave beat her to every lecture, a mute, steady shadow behind the tripod at the back of the room.

**+November 1994+**

"Anyone who so much as breathes the word 'midterm' in my hearing--and I have excellent hearing for a woman my age," Jade warned them, waving her newspaperkind with sparkling sternness, "will get a swift whack to the snout. Leave your TAs alone! They won't grade any faster with you breathing down their necks. TAs, no stipend this week if you give in to peer pressure! Believe me, I will find out! Does anyone have any more questions?" she asked over the end-of-class rustling and chattering. They were over time, as always, but the kids never seemed to mind. Most of them, if they'd had evening classes scheduled after hers, dropped them or transferred to another section. She took a certain amount of territorial pleasure in the fact.

A boy in the center rows started to raise his hand, and she pointed at him with her paper before he could take it back. "Josh!"

Josh made a face like he'd swallowed a pollywog and looked around. Half the class had already left, and only a few people--the die-hards, the fans either of her celebrity or her knowledge--remained. This didn't seem to comfort the boy as he stood. "This is kind of about what--what you were talking about last week, with the expansion of the universe and all. It's kind of a dumb question, though." He adjusted his glasses and smiled pleadingly.

"That's fine! I'm not going to tell you I don't believe in stupid questions, but I do believe in teaching." She grinned. "Didn't think I'd let you off the hook that easily, did you, Josh?"

He chuckled and looked down. "I guess not, Dr. English. Okay. Do--Do you think," he stammered as he tugged at his tie, "if the universe keeps spreading outward, do you think it will take us longer to discover any--any extraterrestrial lifeforms that may exist? On v-viable planets, I mean. If there are any."

She stood straighter, hands on the podium, suddenly steel-serious. She had to choose her next words carefully. "Are you asking me about alien contact?"

Danger, danger, screamed her nerves. Somewhere, her grandmother was watching, needle teeth bared, claws around Jade's heart.

"Uh. Yerm, um." The other hangers-on tittered behind hands and whispered to one another as they packed their notebooks. Josh floundered, scratched his bristly hair, and then surprised her by grinning, all embarrassed innocence. "Yes?"

He had no idea. She smiled and leaned forward. "Oh, no. What makes you think they aren't already here?"

It was those remaining students who saved her, laughing as if she'd cracked the greatest joke all day. Josh chortled along, a good sport. None of them had seen the declaration of war in her smile, tucked behind her teeth like a bullet.

But Dave raised his head from behind his camera, and he wore that keen, watchful interest again. Jade looked down and shuffled her papers.

"Don't forget, all late lab write-ups so far are due in my mailbox by four P.M. on Thursday. Don't give up! Even a ten is better than a zero!"

Dismissed, the last stragglers trickled out, and a big bruiser of a girl--Jade recognized her as a rugby player, what was her name, Kate?--slapped Josh amiably between the shoulder blades and hooked her arm around him, teasing. Jade scanned the room for any other watchers, though Betty must have had eyes she couldn't see, and clomped off stage. She was glad Professor Dutta allowed her her eccentricities. Her combat boots would serve her better here than the pumps suggested in the department dress code.

"Dave, could you take my lecture notes back up to my office when you're all packed up?" she asked as she made her way up the aisle.

"Uh--"

"Great, thanks!"

She didn't linger for his answer. Her fingers itched, the little hairs on her arms rose and told her battle, and after the tensest, most arduous elevator ride of her life, she slammed the roof door of the Sass open straight into a drone's metal face.

Jade knew these fights like breathing, now, and she thrust the butt of her rifle into the robot's optic sensor without missing a beat. The glass lens gave with a comical tinkle, and she reversed her grip to shove the muzzle into the crack and fired. The drone spasmed and fell, leaking thick, organic fluids. Jade only kicked it aside and ducked around the corner of the stairwell enclosure. Just in time: a spray of bullets peppered the wall where she'd stood.

"I hate urban strife," she growled to herself and put on her computer-guided targeting goggles.

Three more drones were closing in, moving at angles so the construction equipment still (still!) sitting on the roof would block her fire. She broke cover and felled one with a beautiful headshot; it crashed into the hood of an aging Jetta parked below. Jade winced. She'd have to send Paul an apology before the next faculty meeting. An apology and a new car. Curse the Batterwitch.

She withdrew behind the enclosure again and chewed her lip. She couldn't hit the other two drones from her position, and they were fanning out to catch her in a pincer between them. She had to move.

Easier said than done, said her creaking hips.

It's you or me, she told them, and you're me, so shut up!

Another burst of gunfire by her ear decided her, and she dashed for the other side of the roof, hoping to get behind one tarp-covered machine that offered at least a little defense. The door to the stairwell swung open behind her.

"Dave!" she yelled, reaction time too slow.

Later, she'd wonder what kind of life he'd led before now, because Dave's instantaneous response was to somersault under the barrage and come up running. "Fire escape, go!" he called, his camcorder nestled in the crook of his arm like a football as he made towards her.

No time to argue. She grabbed the ladder and clambered down, though her one arm trembled under the weight of both body and gun. Dave skipped the ladder entirely, dropping from the roof to the first landing with an impact that shook the whole escape. He protected his camera first, she noted as he rolled to his feet again. And then a drone rounded the building, arm already raised to shoot.

"Jesus!" yelped Dave, and Jade heard the distinct click of an activated fetch modus.

With an almost cartoonish metal ring, a salvo of WEAPONS (4+1+1+3+1+1+1=12) launched itself from Dave's sylladex. If drones could look surprised, this one's jaw would have hit the floor as an assortment of knives, throwing stars, and gunblades skewered it through. It hit the thick concrete wall of the Sass and then hung there, sparking, like a particularly large and ugly species of Lepidoptera.

Jade looked at Dave. He had one hand clapped over his mouth, but he lifted it to do a quick calculation on his fingers. "J's worth eight points," he said finally.

"Keep moving, you butter-brained fuckass, there's one more!" Jade shouted, hobbling down the metal stairs as fast as she could.

He followed closely, not pushing, but keeping up a low and rapid mantra of "go, go, keep going, shit," that she really could have done without. She'd lost sight of the last drone, and people must have noticed the noise by now. Spectators would provide more distractions and targets for the drones. Grandmother Betty knew Jade wouldn't stand do let an innocent get hurt.

"Go ahead of me! I'll cover you!" said Jade, turning and grabbing Dave's arm. He stared at her, nodded, and scooted past her only to vault over the banister again. Steel clanged under his shoes as he leaped and squirreled groundward like a sugar glider. She continued to descend at her more senior-friendly pace, both ears straining for the jets of the missing drone. A gunning motorcycle down the street tricked her hearing, and she ground her teeth together in frustration.

"Uh," Dave said, two stories down. "Abuela."

She stopped, then craned over the side.

The drone had turned its thrusters off to sneak up on foot. Now it stood on the school green over Dave's crouched form, gun pressed to the back of his head. The flat glass of its eyes showed nothing as it stared, motionless, gaze trained on her. Dave was frozen, too, one hand still on the ground from his landing, camera tucked against his stomach.

"Well, shit," she muttered, and started to lower her gun.

The revving engine grew suddenly deafening.

Jade's mouth fell open as a motorcycle careened up the wheelchair ramp from the science quad, soared over Dave's head, and smashed its front wheel straight into the drone's throat. The robot fell under the bike, which bounced once with the impact, and then something _crunched_.

It was the drone's head beneath the back tire of the motorcycle.

Space itself held its breath.

Dave gaped over his shoulder, shades slipping down his nose. The small crowd of students that had gathered started to speak in hushed awe. The motorcycle grunted to life again, and as the rider started to guide it off the busted robot, Dave whipped his camcorder to his eye to get it on tape.

Jade swore under her breath as incredulous laughter bubbled up from her stomach. He'd been filming the whole time. She wanted to run down and shake him.

The rider put one foot down and removed her helmet.

"Dr. English, I presume," said the young woman with a prim, but bright-eyed smile.

"Hello. I like your bike!" Jade called down, putting her rifle away just as Professor Dutta exited the Sass.

"I--what-- _Dr. English?"_ he asked, plaintive. He held out both hands palm-up toward the very dead robot behind the building.

She straightened as well as she could, ignoring the protests from her lower back. "Sorry, Ijay! Science project gone wrong, you know how it is."

"Kids these days," muttered Dave in agreement, and the crowd relaxed, if it didn't disperse. Jade's reputation for excitement preceded her, and the school had been waiting for something wild all semester.

A sophomore called campus security as Jade took the rest of the stairs down. The mysterious motorcycle rider--blonde and golden-brown, not unlike Dave--tossed her a pager.

"I'll talk to you later," she promised. "I like my bike, too. I'd rather they didn't impound it for reckless driving and endangerment on college grounds."

"Dr. English, what exactly is going on here?"

The cyclist wheeled around and was gone. Dave started to stand, but he aborted the movement with a grimace and sat carefully instead.

Jade frowned and hurried to his side, brushing Professor Dutta off momentarily. "Dave, are you okay?"

"All systems green, ma'am, awaiting the signal for take-off." She squatted in front of him, pressing her lips into a thin, white line, and he started fiddling with the camcorder. "Rolled my ankle a little on that last landing. It's no big, I can get home, I just." She thought she could see his eyes flick up and then away again. "Guess I can't skate it. Might take me a while."

"Do you folks need an ambulance here?" asked a security officer, approaching Jade, Dave, and Professor Dutta with concern.

"No," said Dave, who then failed spectacularly to stand up.

"I rather think you do," said Dutta drily.

Dave's grip tightened on his camera and he looked at Jade, his face drawn and determined. She hesitated, but when the officer picked up his radio, she put a hand on Dave's shoulder and stood. "It's all right, officer, he's one of mine. If it's just a twisted ankle, I can take care of it myself, and if I think it's worse I'll take him straight to the hospital. Would that be all right, Dave? I'll drive you home."

"Make sure you can move it 'fore you say yes," said the security officer.

Dave was still looking at Jade, searching for something in her face. "Yeah, all right," he said, and gave his foot a little wiggle. "Yeah. I'm good."

Jade patted his shoulder and turned to Professor Dutta and the officer to explain the accident--a cleaned-up version, of course. She knew nothing about the girl on the motorcycle and didn't pretend to. The drones she claimed were experimental Skaianet tech (sometimes it galled Jade how close the comparison really came); the rest she filled with physics buzzwords like _gravitation_ and _figurative examples of non-Euclidean space_ until the security officer just nodded helplessly and waved her off. Professor Dutta still looked skeptical, but she gave him a sheepish smile and pressed her palms together until he shook his head.

"Just tell me later," he said, putting his hands behind his back. "See to the boy. And, Dr. English," he added, half-turning to face her.

"Yes?"

He canted his head towards the Sass, where the drone Dave had accidentally shish-kebabed still hung limp. "Can I trust you to pick up all your toys by seven A.M. tomorrow morning?"

She saluted sharply, then winked. "Now who's the mother, sonny boy?"

He smiled, not as broadly this time, and left. Jade stooped by Dave, who had gotten bored of the proceedings and now lay flat on his back with a Game Boy in his hands. Someone had brought him an icepack for his ankle, and Jade captchalogued it for later.

"Okay, Mister Tough Guy. Ready to walk?"

Dave didn't answer for a few moments. Jade pushed slowly down on the Game Boy until it bumped into his glasses.

"Mnh," he said.

"I'm going to take that as a no." She looked him over, chin in her hands. "You know, you're really skinny. Do you get enough to eat?"

"Dunno about you, Abuela, but I'll have you know a proper Southern belle never talks about her we _iaAH--_ "

Jade lifted with her knees, one arm under Dave's legs, the other around his back. He dropped his Game Boy onto his chest and clutched at her shoulder, looking more terrified than he had under pursuit by Imperial drones.

"Christ--put me down, what're you doing, you're like a hundred years old!"

"Oh, stop whining, you're perfectly safe as long as you're with me." She tested his weight. He was heavy, but not the worst load she'd ever hauled. Not even the worst in the past year. Her back groaned, but held. "My truck's parked right in front of the Sass, anyway."

She set off at a trot, and after a few seconds of whimpering about osteoporosis and muscle loss, Dave seemed convinced that she wasn't about to collapse under him like a folding umbrella. "Hey, if you can cart this much cargo on your own, the hell was I throwing all those boxes around for?"

"Ijay--the professor I was just talking to, the one who wanted to call you an ambulance--he seems to have some kind of superstition about old ladies and ladders."

Dave eyeballed her, one brow raised over the frame of his shades. "Abuelita, after today, I don't think anything could kill you short of a nuclear explosion. And even then I'd need to see the body. How's your brother Kal-El?"

She barked a laugh. "I'm flattered, Dave, but I'm really just an--"

"Alien?"

He asked it in a low, earnest voice, one that didn't carry past her ears. Jade glanced down at him quickly, and there was that hunger again: waiting, wary, sharp.

"No," she told him in the same voice. "But let's talk about it at my place."

"All right," he agreed, like he had all the time in the world.

The drive to her apartment was quiet. Dave held the icepack to his ankle and watched Houston go by out the window of her truck, apparently copacetic with his lot. Jade tuned the radio to classic rock but kept the volume down, and after ten minutes of companionable, but anticipant, silence, they arrived at her apartment.

"I've got the whole first floor. Rich grandma privileges." She opened the passenger door for Dave and helped him out. "Think you can make it?"

He put some weight on his ankle and winced, but nodded. "Yeah, I'm cool. No problem." She wound her arm under his anyway and, with her support, he managed to hop along. As they crossed the building threshold, Dave mumbled, "Heh."

"What?" Jade asked.

He gave her a sidelong smile. "You remembered my no-returns policy on banged up goods."

"Dave." She rolled her eyes, thwapped the back of his head with an open palm, and slipped out from under him to unlock her apartment. "How does your mother put up with you?"

A shrug. "Wouldn't know."

"Well, I guess I don't have a choice. I break it, I buy it, right?" She opened the door and smiled softly at him. "I never thought I'd be the kind of old lady to take in stray toms. Think I should get you a flea collar?"

"Mee-yow, Granny." He limped inside and flopped face-down onto her couch, shins dangling across the armrest. She locked the door behind her and he muttered something into the pillows, but Jade's pocket beeped at her.

"Who's that?" he asked as she pulled out the pager.

After reading the number, she picked up the phone by Dave's feet and nudged him to roll over. "I think this is our dear H. M. Stanley."

"I'll pretend I get that obviously ancient reference."

"Shh!"

The phone was ringing, and a girl picked up. Jade recognized the velvety alto. "Hello."

"Hi! This is Jade English, I'd just like to thank you for saving my boyfriend today." Dave coughed, and Jade just swept his legs off the armrest and sat down, twanging the phone cord like a spring. "I'm going to make some macaroni and cheese for his ouchies and then sit down for all the questions I'm sure he has for me. Would you like some?"

The girl chuckled. "Macaroni, ouchies, or questions?"

"Pick your top two."

"I'd be honored to share some cheesy interrogation noodles with you," said the motorcycle girl. "My name is Rose Lalonde, and I believe we're going to be very good friends."


	2. Love Isn't Always on Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doubt, and then discovery again. The universe is finite, but it has no edge; we can go on forever.

**+November 1994+**

"What a handsome fellow," said Rose, kneeling before Halley's stuffed corpse.

"Good dog, best friend," Jade affirmed as she drained the macaroni in a colander.

"Am I really going to have to be the one to start this conversation," asked Dave, still sprawled on his back on the couch. Jade had wrapped his ankle snugly in an elastic bandage, and he kept it elevated by hooking it over the back of the sofa. "Like, really."

Jade laughed. "Why don't we let our guest get comfortable first? Rose, tell us about yourself."

"I'm a guest, too," said Dave under his breath, but Rose had already risen to face them.

Rose was a slip of a girl in a leather jacket, hardly up to Jade's nose, but she held herself like an Egyptian queen. She wore her hair in that highlighted shag so popular these days; it was just a bit shorter than Dave's, curling in under her throat and brushing her collarbone. She twisted a strand between her fingers and managed, with conscious effort, not to chew it.

"I'm not sure what to say." She crossed to sit on the armrest of the big, cushy chair Jade preferred to the couch for naps. "Mine is hardly a tale that inspires confidence. You may not believe me."

"I just got shot at by robot Vikings wearing forks on their heads thanks to my querida abuela here," said Dave as Jade set out three plates of Kraft dinosaurs. "Try us."

Rose crossed her legs. "Very well."

She'd ridden south from New York on a gut feeling. Rose's feelings, she'd always found, led to the kind of lucky breaks others called miracles. She'd won the lottery. Twice.

"I'm leaving you for greener sugar mama-bearing pastures," Dave told Jade. She bapped him with an issue of _Fine Gardening_ and sat on the floor.

Rose was putting herself through college at Columbia (which impressed Jade, at least) with the winnings. English and comparative literature, she said with a half-lidded smile, with a focus on psychology of the supernatural across cultures. But she had decided to take a gap year for "personal reasons."

"More feelings?" asked Jade.

Rose laced her fingers over her knee and looked askance. Her makeup concealed deep shadows under her eyes, Jade noticed. "In a way. Now that I think of it, I'd prefer to hear some of your story before I continue. About the 'robot Vikings,'" she said, leaning forward. "And the person who sent them."

"And why they were after you," Dave added. He was looking at her upside-down, once more still and serious. "I've got some burning questions on the topic myself."

Jade looked from one young, solemn face to the other.

"I think you kind of owe us, after today," said Dave quietly. Rose bounced her foot once and said nothing.

They were right. What's more, they were involved. Jade sighed and set her fork down. "Well," she said, pushing her plate aside, "where should I begin?"

She told them about Betty. Jade told them about her cruelty, her greed, the lack of any human empathy for the creatures she would rule. She told them about the alien planet five million galaxies away, the planet her grandmother wanted to carve out of Earth's pretty, blue heart. She told them about aliens. She told them about herself. By the end, Rose's food had gotten cold, and Dave had polished off the last of Jade's macaroni.

"Damn," he said.

Rose rested her head on the back of her hand. "This is a lot to take in," she replied to Jade's questioning noise. "I had some idea, but still. The scope of this is...quite frankly, completely off the rails."

Jade stacked her and Dave's empty plates and held a hand out for Rose's. "What do you mean, you had some idea?"

"I have," Rose started, but then she stopped, fidgeted. "Visions," she said after a moment. "Precognitive dreams. They're not clear, but they produce strong compulsions in me, urges to do or stop--something, I'm not always sure. I've seen," she leaned back, hands still linked around her knee, pale eyes closed, "the return of the Dark Ages, intellectually and literally. Masks of laughter. A flooded city, not New York. Nowhere I'd been."

She opened her eyes halfway and paused, lips pressed together. "I think it's this city," she finally finished, looking at Dave almost apologetically.

"Have you ever seen _her_?" Jade asked, cold.

Rose shook her head. "No. Not yet. But I've seen you." Her gaze flicked to Dave again. "And you. You seem to be taking this rather well, by the way."

"You think?" he replied. Jade glanced back at him as she bused the dirty dishes to the kitchen. Dave had appeared oddly unruffled since the attack, and even now, he'd gone back to fiddling with his camcorder. "Maybe this is just my front of unassailable equipoise. Maybe I'm shaking in my calf leather boots with all this talk of aliens and ESPer conspiracies and shit."

"Dave, I've seen you scared. You ramble and shoot butterfly knives out of your sylladex by accident when you're scared." Jade left the plates in the sink and returned to peer at him over the back of the couch. "You're not scared. I don't even think you're upset."

"I don't ramble."

Jade patted his cheek. "You're literally the rambliest, mumbliest guy I've ever met, and I work in academia. But you're changing the subject!" Rose watched them with interest as Jade leaned further over the couch and pinched at Dave's face with both hands. "You didn't flip out _at all_ after all the drones were gone. In fact, I think you sounded practically excited! What's the deal, mister."

"Stop, stop, you're kneading a national treasure," he complained, batting at her half-heartedly with his free hand. "I'm calling the National Guard, this is defacement of a masterpiece."

She let go but continued to hang there, arms crossed, studying him seriously. "Where did you come from, Dave?" she asked, reaching down once more to sweep a lock of hair out of his face.

He blinked up at her, momentarily lost for words. Rose cleared her throat politely and he came back to himself. "It's nothing like your story, or hers," he murmured, looking at his camera. "I'm just a guy, you know. I don't see things, or fight aliens."

"You did today," Jade reminded him.

"And I haven't fought aliens before now, either," Rose said. "Who knows, maybe tomorrow you'll rise as the next Oracle at Delphi."

"Great. Cover me in pythons and ask Apollo to join me for a smoke."

Dave put his camera down and let out a long breath, staring at the ceiling. Finally, he said, "I don't have any parents. I raised myself, here in Houston, after I fell out of the sky and hit a pony."

He waited for a response.

"Fascinating," said Rose.

"Was the pony okay?" asked Jade.

"This is the worst audience ever." Dave swept his hair back from his forehead. "Look, since I was by myself, I got into a lot of trouble, right? I couldn't keep my scrawny, diapered ass out of the fire. But every time something happened, every time it looked like I was really gonna die--I was somewhere else."

He swung his leg down and sat up, clasping his hands together in his lap around his camera. "It was like, I don't know. Something was watching over me. Something didn't want me to bite it just yet." His mouth twisted. "I saw it eventually. It was a cat." He held his hands out about a foot apart from each other. "Yay big, white, looked like a total asshole."

"That does sound like a cat," Rose told him. Jade just watched Dave squirm. He was so young, she thought, and his hands so slender and unscarred.

"So I just figured," he went on, "if this omnipotent cat god or whatever wanted me to survive, then, shrug, who was I to argue. Maybe it was saving me for later." He picked at some invisible lint on his camera. "Maybe there was something important for me to do.

"And then Abuela," he nodded to Jade, "comes in out of nowhere and asks me to tape her classes, and now there's these aliens, and, eh." He rolled his shoulders as Jade walked around the couch to sit Indian-style beside him. "I thought maybe they might be connected."

Jade tapped her lips skeptically. "I don't know, Dave. I've never met a god cat before. I'm not sure why one would help you."

"But, the long search for purpose, fulfilled." Rose uncrossed her legs only to fold her arms instead. "That would be convenient for Dave, wouldn't it? And to find himself crossing a hero's path, at that. A mentor along the road." She tipped her head graciously to Jade. "As a student of literature, following the plot arc from unexplained earthfall to future revolutionary is hard to resist."

"Yeah, I'm a one-stop shopping trip for all your favorite Skywalker clichés. And that's another thing I want to ask," he said, hunching forward intently. Jade glanced at him, but his attention was fixed on Rose.

"Mm?"

"Why the hell do you look so much like me?"

Rose raised both eyebrows. Dave continued to glare at her, hawklike. Jade looked between them, lifted her hands to her cheeks, and said, "Oh my gosh, you really do!"

"I'd've let the facial features slide under the Hot People Look Alike Clause, and maybe even the weird, unidentifiable ethnicity, but you even bleach your hair the same way I do. I can see your roots."

"Admittedly, it's a bit strange to come across another possible Mexican-Korean mix," said Rose. "Though, of course, I'm not sure of my ancestry myself."

Dave frowned. "I thought I was sort of Japanese."

"Is that why you had all those cheap ninja swords on you?" Jade asked, laughing.

"Regardless, unless some distraught mother steps forward to explain how she accidentally tossed half a set of twins off a plane over Texas on her way to the Adirondacks twenty years ago, I don't think we'll come any closer to the mystery of our shared looks tonight. So," Rose said, tilting her chin up. "What do we do now? They've seen our faces."

"That's true." Sobered, Jade turned to the world map that covered one wall of her living room. "Do you know another language? I know Dave speaks Spanish, so if I could get you two out of the country--"

"What? No." Dave's refusal came fast and flat, and even as Jade frowned severely at him, she caught Rose nodding out of the corner of her eye. "No chance, Abuela, you're not deporting me that easily."

Rose decaptchalogued two knitting needles and a ball of yarn and settled in, as if daring Jade to throw her out. "I agree with Dave. Dr. English, I've seen you in my dreams. Both of you." She turned from Dave to Jade, eyes alight. "This doesn't end here."

Dave turned and put his injured ankle up on the back of the couch again, bent his other knee in order to lie there without pushing into Jade. "Besides, I've almost saved up enough for a new camera. I'm not blowing that on a plane ticket because your great-great alien granddam wants to pop a cap in my ass. She can get in line."

Only then did Jade realize that they both believed her. Neither of them had questioned any part of her story, nor had she thought to doubt theirs. Warmth flared in her chest like a forge, and heat spread upwards until she beamed.

"Well," she said, drawing out the word, "I did install Skaianet's most powerful defense system around this apartment. It's specifically designed to recognize Batterwitch interference. And," she went on, papping Dave's shin, "I have a couch and a guest room."

"Dibs," said Dave, "on the couch."

Rose withdrew a brick-like mobile phone from her purse modus. "I'll cancel my hotel reservations."

**+February 1995+**

Time spun even more quickly with two youngsters in the apartment. Their twenty-first birthdays (December third and fourth: further proof of soap-opera twinship or coincidence?) passed, and Jade made Heineken spurt from Dave's nose by reciting Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Gin & Juice" word-perfect. Rose performed drunken tarot card readings and kissed both of them sloppily on the nose after two pear martinis. Dave--and everyone who tried to use the bathroom after him--found out the hard way that he could tolerate about as much alcohol as a vole.

"When's your birthday, Auntie Jade?" asked Rose, bright-cheeked and giggly.

Jade dug her elbow jokingly against Rose's ribs. "You stop having birthdays after sixty-five, kid."

"Fuck that, I'm getting off at forty." His first foray into binge drinking stymied, Dave returned to his one true vice: nicotine. Jade usually made him smoke out on the little patio, but, what the hell, it was his birthday. "Here lies Dave Strider. He died as he lived: smoking hot and surrounded by rambunctious bitches."

"Dave." Rose pouted. "I know you're a li'l drunk an' constitutionally inhibited, but that's verr demeaning."

"But kind of flattering," said Jade, pushing up her sagging breasts. "No one's called the old girls 'rambunctious' since the moon landing party in '69, and Capcom was totally plastered. I don't think he could see past his face."

Dave blushed as Rose laughed uproariously. "Forty, huh?" Jade continued, feeling mellow and wise with a faint beer buzz. "What do you think you can do with forty years?"

Neither of them answered for some moments. "I want to write," Rose said finally, slipping down the couch to put her head in Jade's lap and her legs across Dave's. "I want to take all this--all the shtuff I know and ssput it in a book, tell people." She raised her voice slightly. "'Here, look, 's all everything you need to know 'bout, everything that's happening. Now get out here'n _change_ it.'" She hiccuped, sighed, and snuggled into Jade's stomach. "'Stop makin' me do all the work.'"

Silence prevailed again, besides Rose's quiet, comfortable noises. "What about you, Dave?" Jade asked, stroking Rose's hair.

He stretched his legs out and exhaled. "I wanna make movies," he said. "Always have."

"You will," Jade promised, covering his hand with hers over Rose's sleeping form. "I know it." She held tightly, steadily, and grinned when he smiled like the new moon, slender and shy.

Dave quit smoking after his store closed down, but he continued faithfully to tape Jade's lectures. He filled his free time with joke comics and combat practice with Rose, who wrote when she wasn't sitting in on classes or knitting.

Rose was a welcome addition to Jade's life. She shone, brilliant and witty, with a silly streak hovering so close to her surface Jade didn't believe anyone could mistake her for the brooding mystery she parodied. She collected plastic toy cephalopods from a children's cartoon Jade found absurdly engaging, and she was highly, dangerously, competent.

"I see so much," she whispered to Jade one evening, when Dave had gone out to make a few bucks playing sets for a club he frequented. Jade had suggested a girls' night in, with nail painting, ice cream, and war strategy. They'd lit candles for the hell of it, and Rose's face looked softer in the flickering glow. More vulnerable. She closed her eyes and sighed. "I see everything that could be, sometimes. It's overwhelming."

Jade took Rose's hands, careful of the drying polish. Her smooth, golden skin looked pale against Jade's gnarled knuckles.

"What do you see now?" she asked.

Rose looked at her with wide eyes. "You," she answered, hushed. "You, and the earth, and the hurtling stars."

Jade firmed her grip gently, feeling a tidal energy in those small, ink-stained hands. "Where do they land?"

"On us." Rose's hands clenched, curled into scrabbling claws and then fists as she bent, trembling, into Jade. "Oh, Jade. They fall on us."

Pink and purple nail polish ran down Jade's arms like gashes, but she pulled Rose into her arms and rocked her as if she were her own daughter. "We'll hold, Rose. We're strong, you'll see. Shh, shh. Everything will be okay."

Rose cried exactly the way lost children don't: quiet and lonely and hopeless.

But they had fewer nights like that than days like this:

"Abuela, I can't let this unadulterated travesty stand any longer," Dave told her on the back porch, scissors tight in his hand.

Jade stared at him, nonplussed, and then removed her clip-on shades. "Is this about the TV? Because I told you, I'm sorry, but I needed the cathode ray tubes for--"

"It's about," he said, eyebrows pulled down, "how you mistook Rose for me last night and _fondled her ass_."

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Jade kept a straight face. "You know, Dave, I can grope your ass, too, if you feel left out."

"Okay, no, this isn't about my--"

"Though I might need a telescope to find it. My eyes aren't what they used to be!"

Dave made a noise like a jammed sink disposal, slammed the scissors and a comb down on the little table next to her, and sat on the ground in front of her chair. "Just cut my hair already," he muttered through his teeth, like the loss of his goofy mane was the bitterest of sacrifices.

She smiled and put her book away, picked up the scissors, and swept his hair back from his shoulders. "Any requests?"

"Don't make it suck."

Jade chuckled and started snipping away. He relaxed gradually, obediently turning his head when she asked and tucking his shades into the front of his shirt. She tried to sneak a peek at his face when she trimmed the front, but Dave had his eyes closed.

"You've got steady hands," he said, surprising her.

"I am a scientist, Dave," she replied, evening the ends above his ears. Inside the apartment, she heard the front door open and close; Rose must have come home from her errands. Jade hummed and had Dave face forward again. "And I used to do this for my brother, when we were young."

Dave almost turned then. She could see the faint glint of an eyelash in the sun as he blinked. His lashes were surprisingly long. "You have a brother?"

"Mm." Comb, snip snip. Comb, snip. Blond clippings fluttered down like feathers or snow. "It's been a long time."

"Is he still," Dave started, but fumbled on the wording. He hesitated, shifted, and then said, "I mean, you're in your eighties, so--"

"Is he alive, you mean?" Jade craned her neck to the side to catch Dave's expression, but he looked away. A flush crept over the back of his neck, now exposed, and she laughed and brushed hair off his nape to ease him. "He lives in Washington now. He married a good, sweet woman and raised a wonderful son."

She went back to trimming, cutting as close as she could at the back. Dave's hair would look better with short back and sides, she thought. He had the right face for it. "I haven't spoken to John in seventy years," she said, realizing it was true.

"Younger or older?"

"I'm a bit older." She rested her hand on the back of Dave's head for a moment, studying the contrast between her brown skin and his gold-bleached hair, between her freckles and the dark roots growing in at his scalp.

He kept quiet for the rest of the cut. "I always wanted a brother," he said when she finished.

"They're a lot of work." She blew hair off her palms like dandelion seeds. "They're fun, but they take a lot of time. Not to mention they're enormous pains in the ass."

"I know," he said, and Jade knew he didn't, but that he wanted to more than anything. She placed her hand on his head again, stroked along the grain the way she'd done for John when they were small and thin-skinned.

A strain of strings sounded from the living room. Rose was tuning her violin, and they listened without speaking, each lost in their own thoughts.

Then she began to play. As soon as the refrain hit, Dave jerked, jammed his sunglasses back on, and raced inside, neck flushed dark again with embarrassment. "Rose!"

The music stopped. "Well, this is awkward," said Rose, and when Jade walked in, she nearly cracked a rib laughing.

Rose had had her hair chopped short in the cutest bob Jade had ever seen, and, from the side, she and Dave looked nearly identical again.

"I give up," he grumbled.

"It was a valiant effort." Rose patted his back in mock comfort.

"Well, you both look great, so I'd call it a win all around!" said Jade, grinning.

"But at _what cost_ ," asked Dave, tugging at his forelocks to find out if he could even see his own hair anymore.

Only later that night did Jade realize that Rose had been playing Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson." She took a long time to fall asleep that night, too hot in the face with laughter--laughter and something else--to drift off.

**+April 1995+**

Jade dreamed.

She warred upon a field of snow and scarlet lilies. Above played the Aurora Borealis, just as she'd seen it once in Norway after the war, still so young and wondering. But there was darkness, now; death howled on the wind. She had to run. She had to save them.

But too late. There lay John on the bank of a creek, a boy as she'd last seen him in person, tousled and grimy with soot from his latest prank. But there was no chuckle in the air now, no smile in his cheeks. His skin was split and bloody, and the breeze stank of burnt flesh. She came upon the corpse and gagged, eyes stinging, but she had to press on. She shoved the golden rubble aside and leaped through the flames of the broken city, fingers tight on the trigger of her rifle.

She found Rose bathed in the flickering lights, a figure of myth and ice. She stood still at the edge of a frozen waterfall, barefoot in a white gown. Her eyes were closed and she smiled like a sleepwalker.

"Rose!" Jade yelled, lungs burning in the cold.

The girl's eyelids fluttered, but they remained serenely shut as she spoke. "I can't remember what I was trying to prove anymore."

"Rose, you don't have to prove anything. We've always believed you!" The ground cracked under Jade's boot and she stumbled sideways, panting. Beneath her feet ran the frozen river that fed the falls. She paused for a moment, gathered her breath, and shouted again. "I've always believed in you!"

Rose's fingers twitched, grasping for something, and relaxed again. A frown creased her face for a moment, as if she were trying to wake up. She opened her mouth, breathed, and picked up her chin. It didn't hide the trembling of her lips.

"I'm fully aware I'll probably die and fail."

"No! Rose, never!" Jade let her gun go so it hung by the strap and reached for her friend with both arms. The ice continued to snap beneath her, but she kept forward, gritting her teeth. She was still too far away. "I won't let it happen, I swear. I'll protect you!"

Rose's head turned towards the brink behind her. Had something called her? Her hands came up slowly and Jade thought she might reach for her, but they only curled at her chest like a hesitant child's.

"What are you suggesting I ask?"

Jade inched toward her but her foot slipped. She fell hard, and reports sharp as gunshots rang up the river. She clenched her fists and stood slowly, testing every step.

"Ask for help, Rose," she said. "Ask for me!"

Rose opened her beautiful, gemstone eyes.

"Jade," she whispered, and then the ice broke.

The cold hit Jade like a tile wall, stunning her, and for an endless moment all was water and confusion and no way up. Then she broke the surface again and gasped, coughing, calling for Rose.

Rose, who still balanced impossibly on the edge of the waterfall. Rose who lifted arms towards her, face pale, lips parted around her name. Rose whose eyes filled with darkness like the tide and screamed. And fell.

" _Rose!_ "

The river swept Jade in the opposite direction as Rose drowned.

She hit shore, and Jade hauled herself out of the water, shivering, but she kept her teeth bared. Dave was still out there. Dave still needed her. And she wouldn't, couldn't, let him die.

The earth shook and a plume of ash rose over the forest. She followed the rumblings to Dave, who stood smoking a cigarette in the lee of a tree, hands in his pockets.

"You're awake," she said, unsure. She couldn't stand more of Rose's unnatural sleeptalk, not from him.

There was that minute movement of his head that said he was looking at her, there was his slight nod. "I think I've been awake like you all along and didn't know it," he said and dropped his cigarette in the melting snow. "So where to?"

"Go ahead of me," she said, and once again Dave let her steer him forward without complaint.

Dogs' howling had never bothered her, but something evil laced the wind. She couldn't call it sinister; it was too simple and greedy for that. It was hunger. It was ravening. Jade kept a hand on Dave's back and the other on her gun, alert.

The bark rang from behind, and Jade whirled, aimed, and fired into the heart of an unshaped blackness.

Dave crumpled at her back with hardly a sound.

"No," breathed Jade, dropping her gun as she turned. "No, Dave. Oh, no."

A lily bloomed against his shirt: a scarlet star. She dropped to her knees and turned him over, pressed a hand over his heart. He was already cold. Jade gathered him to her breast and pressed her nose into his feathered hair.

"I was supposed to be your hero." Her eyes blurred, and tears froze to her lashes. "I promised to take you home."

"No returns. But you already knew that." The blackness squatted across Dave's body from her. It was smaller than she'd thought, and spoke in a girl's voice.

"Go away," she tried to snarl. Choked. Wept.

The blackness warped like it was laughing or shaking its head. "I can't do that, Jade. Please stop crying, it's just awful and awkward for both of us. Ugh, please! If you keep going like this, I'm going to cry, too."

"And why should I stop? Why couldn't you stop _this?_ " Jade clutched Dave tighter. "What does any of it matter if they all die?"

The blackness flared. "Shoosh!" it commanded, and she shushed, blinking tears. It continued to roil itself, collapsing like a dwarf about to go nova, like an atomic warhead before the blast. It took form before her, growing limbs, weaving starlight into its hair. Jade's thirteen-year-old self stared back at her over Dave's corpse, lip bitten defiantly, eyes sparking. She bared too many teeth. "There is still something worth fighting for!"

Jade retrieved her gun, shrieked, and put a bullet through the girl's head.

" _Jade!_ "

Urgent shaking woke her and she tottered, disoriented, surrounded by shattered glass and plaster. Someone spun her around and she came face to face with Dave, his eyes wide and scared in the darkness.

"What," she said, and found her throat raw. Wetness trickled down her cheeks. "Dave?" she croaked helplessly.

Without a word, he picked her up and carried her out of her bathroom. She lifted a hand to dash the tears from her eyes and realized she was crushing her gun to her chest like an anchor, like a lost, last friend. Rose waited in Jade's room, dressed not in white, but lavender.

"Is she okay?" she asked, voice soft with worry.

"Dunno," said Dave, and set Jade down on her bed. "She shot the hell out of the mirror."

Jade lay back on her pillows, still shaking with her sobs, though she tried to master herself. "You're here--you're--you're both okay--"

"Jade," said Rose, crawling onto the bed beside her and covering her hands with her own small, soft palms. "Jade, listen, it was just a dream. You were sleepwalking."

Dave seemed less convinced. He remained standing by the bed, watching the exits, hands opening and closing like he had something to fight until Rose wrapped her hand around his wrist and shook it. He tensed and then softened, looking at Jade.

"We're here, Abuela," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and placing a callused hand over hers.

She took a deep breath and nodded, let Rose take the rifle from her arms. "Sorry. I just--I've never dreamed like that before. Whew. Hehe."

Her attempt to laugh it off did nothing to budge the concern from Rose's face. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," Jade replied quickly. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with her fingertips. "No, I'll be all right. Can't keep the old girl down."

"I'll get you some water," said Dave, and left.

Rose stroked Jade's hair and murmured nonsense about other dreams she'd had, ones that weren't visions, phantasms of smoke and sand. Dave set the water by her side, looked her over one more time, and then let her send him off to bed. The boy was brave, but he couldn't cut nightmares with a samurai sword. Nor could Rose, but she demurred all of Jade's dismissals. Jade didn't want to go back to sleep that night, but when she finally succumbed, Rose was still there, speaking softly, the mother none of them had ever had.

When Jade woke, Rose was snoring gently, curled atop the covers like a large cat. She didn't stir as Jade shuffled out of bed and into her slippers. Jade watched her for some time. Her breathing was even and unlabored, and her cheeks glowed with youth. There was no darkness in Rose, and Jade loved that about her.

She didn't think about ice and a white gown.

A grunt startled her when she tried to open her door, and she stopped, listening. After a moment of nothing happening, she teased the door inward just a crack, enough for her to see through.

Dave sat against the door, slumped to one side, dead asleep. His chest rose and fell silently, and his hair stuck up in the back where his head had slid across the door. He'd guarded her all night, Jade realized, and her throat tightened. Carefully, she eased the door the rest of the way open, bending down to guide him gently to the floor. He mumbled but didn't wake, and for that she was thankful. His cheek was warm where she'd cradled it in her hand.

"Never let me hurt you, Dave," she whispered. "Don't follow me that far. Not alone. I don't want that." She brushed her thumb over his skin, treasured the softness still there for her to find. "But if you do, I'll bring you back. Whatever it takes. I promise."

Slowly, like the prince in a fairy tale, she leaned down and grazed his lips with hers, chastely, barely a breath of a kiss.

"It's a little _Harold and Maude_ ," murmured Rose, watching her through sleepy slits.

Jade jerked and snatched her hand out from under Dave's head, which, of course, woke him. "Wuzza, where's fire," he said, rolling onto his stomach.

"If there were a fire, Dave, you'd have just killed us all by blocking the exit, you utter dweeb," Rose informed him before going right back to sleep.

"Mmh," he replied, and then cracked his spine with a series of pops that made Jade's back twinge. "You 'kay?" he asked, settling down again, shades just slightly askew.

"Yes, Dave. I'm okay. Thank you," said Jade, and fixed his glasses for him. She'd seen his eyes last night, she recalled as she stepped over him to make breakfast. What color had they been?

She couldn't remember. She only remembered they hadn't been hungry anymore. He'd found what he needed.

He'd found her.

**+May 1995+**

Jade's eighty-fifth birthday came and went (Rose and Dave insisted they celebrate, in the end, and her only stipulation was No Cake). The end of Jade's tenure at Marjorie Husted loomed, and Jade hurled herself harder than ever into finding something there to justify her coming, to excuse how close she'd come to two fumbling children who would chase her to the end of everything. She delved deeper into the brief history of the school, examined the architecture with a more frantic eye. She was running out of time, and if she stayed another year, she'd never leave.

She had to be able to leave. Rose and Dave were too young yet, too full of unfulfilled promises to go down with her. Dave wanted to make movies. Rose had her books to write. They still had work to do.

So did Jade. But it was like her nightmare had blackened the sun. She felt cold all the time. She'd been familiar with death all her life, knew its inevitability like an old friend. Now it felt too close, sapping away even the late spring warmth of Texas. Every time she turned, she saw darkness swallow Rose's sweet light, saw Dave's color bleed into a canvas of snow.

Jade had never felt so old.

She had to finish what she started or her whole life, everything she'd won from the world with teeth and nails and spitting rage, would be for nothing. If she couldn't remove the Empress, she could die trying to cripple her.

Jade finally found what she was looking for a week before finals. No one had ever removed the construction equipment from the roof of the Sass, and--while bureaucratic procrastination knew no bounds--the delay was starting to stink suspiciously.

"Is there a problem with the machines on the roof?" Professor Dutta asked out of the blue.

"Huh? Oh, I forgot all about those." Jade blinked and tried to remember what the conversation had been about before she'd zoned out. Her tea had gone tepid. "What about them?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe you should have a look." When she gave him a quizzical look, he only folded his hands on the table. "A woman of your mechanical expertise, surely you may have some insight on the matter."

Maybe he'd known all along. She thought of him, alone in his sitting room while his son's wife nursed his first grandchild, the barking of happy, overfed dogs ringing through the house. Ijay was her friend. She would never forget that.

When Jade pulled the tarp off what she thought was a reach stacker and found a transportalizer underneath, she knew it was time to go. She wished she'd said something more meaningful than "Don't forget, it's garbage day!" to Dave and Rose on her way out the door.

Well, regrets were for losers, and Jade English won every game she'd ever played. She stepped onto the transportalizer platform and found herself somewhere black.

No. Purple.

Screens lined the large, lab-like room, but most of them were off. A handful showed snow or color tests that seemed somehow off-hue. Jade weaved her way through tables on which other screens lay in parts, not yet assembled.

Only two screens, both at the far end of the room, displayed pictures. Not even video: they were freeze frames, static and silent. Jade touched the left screen to make sure it was real.

The timestamp read, "12/1/1995, 4:13 PM."

It was her. She stood at the prow of a battleship she knew Skaianet owned. The _Edmond Halley_. She was smiling, the wind in her hair, sun on her dark skin and freckles and--

She held a baby in her arms.

He looked like most babies, small and pudgy and oddly ugly, but he had her freckles and glasses like John's and he was hers. She knew it the way she knew how to breathe.

He was hers.

The other screen had no timestamp, but she recognized Dave and Rose, tall and strong and grown. Rose wore a deep violet gown that trailed behind her, and Jade could almost see power's wake in her shadow, the path she'd burned to stand where she stood. There was still no darkness in her, for all the fury she bore. She was a star, a beacon, pain and glory for all who dared to defy her.

Dave was still gangly, still slender, still steel. He stared up at the camera like he knew it was there, like he knew someone was watching. Like Jade was watching. And Jade knew the things he would do to make her proud, the things he would do for everyone but himself. If she were younger, she might have let him try, once. But it was his time to pay out as he saw fit, and he would learn how to war on his own terms. She knew. He had good eyes.

Both of them wore wolfish grins: teeth, anger, and ferocious love.

 _There is still something worth fighting for,_ her other self had said.

And she grinned as well, the way Halley had taught her, because she didn't have to die, now. She didn't have to go out with a bang. There was something worth fighting for, and that something would fight after her. Dave, Rose. Her baby who looked like her brother.

Jade wasn't alone.

They'd hold the line steady.

"Love you," she told the motionless screens, and then she shot up the whole room with a whoop of feral glee.

 

 

 

**+June 2024+**

_"And that's what it means for space to have no edge. While we perceive it as infinite, and there's no loops or portals involved to link one 'end' to another, the volume is actually a fixed quantity!" Rustling and mutters. They didn't get it. She sighed. "I don't expect you all to get it--this is new stuff we're working with, exciting advances in the field! But it's going to be on the final next month, and you should at least be able to understand it enough to say it back to me. Can anyone put it in their own words?"_

_Nobody dared to move. The students laughed nervously under their breaths. Jade English, tall and wiry with her cloud of white hair, stared around the auditorium, glowering. And then she lifted her gaze straight to the camera._

His heart always skipped a beat.

_"Dave," she said, suddenly smiling. "What about you?"_

_"Uh," said someone too close to the camera. The frame jumped a little, jostled. "What about me what."_

_"Do you think you can explain how the universe doesn't have an edge, but does have finite volume?" Even from this distance, he could see her eyes spark. She wore her fire on the inside like a forge._

_The students all turned in their seats to look at him, some grinning, some whispering to one another. Some he could tell had never even noticed him there before._

_He spoke before he knew what he was doing. "It just makes sense, you know? I don't see what the big deal is."_

_The whispering intensified. Jade lifted her eyebrows_ (the movement so familiar his chest ached with it, his scars burned) _and raised her arms._

_"Well, Mister Cool Kid?"_

_"Well." Faint plastic sounds as he readjusted the camera on its tripod. It zoomed in on her face, the shallow wrinkles too many to count._ (He mouthed the words in time with the audio. He knew this drill by heart.) _"Isn't it just like time?"_

He always paused the video there. He froze Jade's breathless wonder, the parted smile of her mouth and the sudden flash of laugh lines, a bright sound about to crash over him like the sea.

"Are you ready to go?" asked Rose as she put away her knitting.

Dave stood, cracked his back, enjoyed Rose's exaggerated wince. "Yeah," he said, setting the VHS remote down in its place on the coffee table. Unlike the many DVD and Blu-Ray clickers he owned, he always knew exactly where this one was.

"She'd be proud, you know," said Rose, folding the finished scarf into a tidy square. "Fifty, instead of forty."

"Still hot and covered in bitches, though."

"Only when I let you meet my girlfriends."

She watched Dave walk to the TV, said nothing when he didn't turn it off. "I miss her," he said, reaching up to touch Jade's cheek. On a screen this wide, it was almost life-size. Rose got up and stood beside him. Her hand found its way into his.

"I do, too, Dave." Her breath sighed out, shuddering. "I do, too."

They stared at the screen in silence, holding hands as the storm raged outside.

"Let's go," Dave said finally.

Rose nodded, squeezed his hand, and readied weapons.

They left the TV on to witness their final stand. They would fight their last battle as they had always fought: together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can watch a pretty cool video about the expanding universe/no edge stuff as explained by a knowledgeable alien [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k3_B9Eq7eM). After watching it myself, I _almost_ felt like I understood.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who put up with my basically being nonexistent for a week because I was writing this story. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I loved writing it. Happy Jadefesting!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: Hold the Line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4056655) by [dashery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery)
  * [Hold the Line (As Dreamers Do)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7623832) by [Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer)




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